Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

“ I’ll learn everything old Mildred can teach me, ever so much, and you’ll see what a manager I will be.”
“You are my own little treasure. You always talk as if you were in the way, somehow, I don’t know how. A wife like you is a greater help to me than one with two thousand a year and the reckless habits of a fine lady. Your wise little head and loving heart, my darling, are worth whole fortunes to me without them, and I do believe you are the first really good wife that ever a Fairfield married. You are the only creature I have on earth, that I’m quite sure of—the only creature.” ”

“ The proud old Squire was a tower dismantled. To be met and foiled so easily in a feat of strength—to have gone down at the first tussle with the “youngster,” whom he despised as a “milksop” and a “Miss Molly,” was to the old Hercules, who still bragged of his early prowess, and was once the lord of the wrestling ring for five and twenty miles round, perhaps for the moment the maddest drop in the cup of his humiliation.
Squire Harry with his trembling hand clutched on the stone balustrade, his tall figure swaying a little, had drawn himself up and held his head high and defiantly. ”

“ THE HEIR OF THE FAIRFIELDS. At dead of night Alice was very ill, and Tom was called up to ride across Cressley Common for the Wykeford doctor. Worse and worse she grew. In this unknown danger—without the support of a husband’s love or consolation—“the pains of hell gat hold of her,” the fear of death was upon her. Glad was she in her lonely terrors to hear the friendly voice of Doctor Willett as he came up the stairs, with a heavy, booted step, in hurried conversation with old Dulcibella Crane, who had gone down to meet him on hearing the sound of his arrival. ”

“ He thought how snug and pleasant they might be comparatively in one of those quaint little toy towns in Germany, where dull human nature bursts its cerements, and floats and flutters away into a butterfly life of gold and colour—where the punter and the croupier assist at the worship of the brilliant and fickle goddess, and bands play sweetly, and people ain’t buried alive in deserts and forests among dogs and “chawbacons”—where little Alice would be all wonder and delight. Was it quite fair to bring her down here to immure her in the mouldering cloister of Carwell Grange? ”

“ He is not a pleasant picture of an English squire, but such, nevertheless, as the old portraits on the walls of Wyvern here and there testify, the family of Fairfield have occasionally turned out.
He is not cheery nor kindly. Bleak, dark, and austere as a northern winter, is the age of that gaunt old man.
He is too proud to grumble, and never asked any one for sympathy. But it is plain that he parts with his strength and his pleasures bitterly. Of course, seeing the old churchyard, down in the hollow at the left, as he stands of an evening on the steps, thoughts will strike him. ”

“ Standing on a flat stone near midway in the stream, he was throwing his flies over a nook where he had seen a trout rise, when he heard the ring of carriage wheels on the road that passes round the base of the old windmill, and pierces the dense wood that darkened the glen of Carwell.
Raising his eyes he did see a carriage following that unfrequented track. A thin screen of scattered trees prevented his seeing this carriage very distinctly. But the road is so little a thoroughfare that except an occasional cart, few wheeled vehicles ever traversed it. ”

“ Away drove the carriage, and Charles stood listlessly at the summit of the embowered and gloomy road that descends in one direction into the Vale of Carwell, and passes in the other, with some windings, to the wide heath of Cressley Common.
This visit, untoward as it was, was, nevertheless, a little stimulus. He felt his spirits brightening, his pulse less sluggish, and something more of confidence in his future.
“There’s time enough in which to tell her my trouble,” thought he, as he turned toward the house; “and by Jove! we haven’t had our dinner. I must choose the time. ”

“ Tom remarked how straight the Squire stood that night, with his back to the fire, eyeing him as he entered from the corners of his eyes, with a grin, and a wicked wag of his head.
“A dull dog, Tom. Who’s a-goin’ to hang ye? D—n ye, look brighter, or I’ll stir ye up with the poker. Never shake your head, man; ye may brew yourself a tankard o’ this, and ye’ll find you’re younger than ye think for, and some of the wenches will be throwing a sheep’s eye at you—who knows?” ”

“ Thanks, Mildred, that will do,” and he drank the glass of sherry she gave him.
“A drop more?” inquired old Mildred, holding the decanter stooped over his glass.
“No, thanks, no, I—it tastes oddly—or perhaps I’m not quite well after all.”
Charles now felt his mind clear again, and his retrospect was uncrossed by those spectral illusions of the memory that seem to threaten the brain with subjugation.
Better the finger of death than of madness should touch his brain, perhaps. His love for his wife, not dethroned, only in abeyance, was restored. ”

“ Come, now, how much rent do you take by the year from that place your fool of a mother left ye—the tartar!—hey?”
“I think, sir, about three hundred a year,” answered Charles.
“Three hundred and eighty,” said the old man, with a grin and a wag of his head. “I’m not so old that I can’t remember that—three hundred and eighty; and ye flung that away in Lunnon taverns and operas, on dancers and dicers, and ye come back here without a shillin’ left to bless yourself, to ride my horses and drink my wine; and ye call that fair play. Come along, here.” ”

“ Do you smoke, Mildred?”
“Smoke, ’m? No, ’m! Dear me, there’s no smell o’ tobacco, is there?” said Mildred, who was always suspecting Tom of smoking slily in his crib under the stairs.
“Smell, no; but I smoke a pinch of tobacco now and again myself, the doctor says I must, and a breath just of opium when I want it. You can have a pipe of tobacco if you like, child, and you needn’t be shy. Well?”
“Ho, Fau! No, ma’am, I thank ye.”
“Fau!” echoed the Dutchwoman, with a derisive, chilling laugh, which apprised old Mildred of her solecism. But the lady did not mean to quarrel. ”

“ Yes, it was the clink of trotting horseshoes. She prayed heaven the blind woman might not hear it. There was a time when her more energetic misanthropy would possibly have enjoyed a fracas such as was now to be apprehended. But years teach us the value of quiet, the providential instincts of growing helplessness disarm our pugnacity, and all but quite reprobate spirits grow gentler and kinder as the hour of parting with earth approaches. Thus had old Mildred taken her part in this game, and as her stake became deeper and more dangerous her zeal burnt intensely. ”

“ It is an art; no one can do it like you. You know I always got you to undertake ours at Oulton, and you remember Tremaine standing beside you, trying, as he said, to learn the art, though I fancy he was studying something prettier.”
Alice laughed; Lord Tremaine was a distant figure now, and this little triumph a dream of the past. But is not the spirit of woman conquest? Is not homage the air in which she lives and blooms? So Alice’s dark, soft eyes dropped for a moment sidelong with something like the faintest blush, and a little dimpling smile. ”

“ Well, I need not say no more than this: there’s them that’s quiet enough now, and will be, that if they thought I was Squire o’ Wyvern I’d make the world too hot to hold me. I’d rather be Harry Fairfield at fair and market than archbishop of hell, I can tell ye, havin’ no likin’ for fine titles and honour, and glory, wi’ a tethered leg and a sore heart; better to go your own gait, and eat your mouthful where ye find it, than go in gold wi’ a broken back, that’s all, and that’s truth. ”

“ The metal flows molten by, and then chills and fixes for ever. So with the life of man—so with the spirit of man. Work while it is called day. The moment fixes the retrospect, and death the character, for ever. The heart knoweth its own bitterness. The proud man looks on the past he has made. The hammer of Thor can’t break it; the fire that is not quenched can’t melt it. His thoughtless handiwork will be the same for ever.
Old Squire Harry did not talk any more about Charlie. About a month after this he sent to Craybourne to say that Dobbs must come up to Wyvern. ”

“ Well, all was quiet there, and so on and into the passage, and so into the great hall, as it was called, which seemed to her to have grown chill and cheerless since she was last there, and so again cautiously up the great stair, with its clumsy banister of oak, relieved at every turn by a square oak block terminating in a ball, like the head of a gigantic ninepin. Black looked the passage through this archway, at the summit of this ascent; and for the first time Mildred was stayed by the sinking of a superstitious horror. ”

“ Alice is my wife. I never had a wife but Alice, by G— Almighty! That other’s a lie. Don’t you know it’s a lie, Harry?”
“Don’t be botherin’ yourself about that now,” said Harry, coldly, with rather a sullen countenance, looking askance through the open space in the window shutter to the distant horizon. “Long heads, my lad, and lawyers lear for the quips and cranks o’ law. What should I know?”
“Harry, I know you love me; you won’t let wrong be believed,” said Charles Fairfield, in a voice suddenly stronger than he had spoken in before. ”

“ Yes, darling, we’ll make out life very well here, I’m sure—my only fear is for you. I’ll go out with my rod, and bring you home my basket full of trout, or sometimes take my gun, and kill a hare or a rabbit, and we’ll live like the old Baron and his daughters in the fairy-tale—on the produce of the streams, and solitudes about us—quite to ourselves ”

“ Lilly Dogger, with red eyes and an inflamed nose, blubbered heart-broken, and murmured to the baby—lest old Mildred should overhear and blow her up—her leave-takings and endearments, as she held it close in her arms.
Beautiful though to us men, utterly mysterious is the feminine love of babies. Lilly Dogger had led a serene, if not a very cheerful life, at Carwell Grange up to this. ”

“ Who’d have thought that wild fellow would ever tie himself to a wife? Who’d have fancied that clever young man that loves making money so well, would have chosen out a wife without a florin to her fortune? Everything is so surprising. Come, let’s have a laugh, you and me together.”
“My laughing days is over, ma’am—not that I see much to laugh at for any one, and many a thing I thought a laughing matter when I was young seems o’erlike a crying matter now I’m grown old,” said old Mildred, and snuffed the kitchen candle with her fingers. ”

“ I almost wish you could. I’ve been only too good to you, and allowed you to trouble me too long.”
“Ha, ha!—you’d like to put me out of the way?”
“You’ll do that for yourself. Can’t you wait, can’t you listen, can’t you have common reason, just for one moment? What do you want, what do you wish? Do you want every farthing I possess on earth, and to leave me nothing?”
“I’m your wife, and I’ll have my rights.”
“Now listen to me, that’s a question I need not discuss, because you already know what I believe on the subject.”
“You know what your brother Harry thinks.” ”

“ The old soger, ma’am—ay, that’s a sight might frighten a body—like a spirit a’most—a great white-faced, blind devil.”
“Who is she? how did she come? She tried to kill me. Oh! Mrs. Tarnley, I’m so terrified!”
And with these words Alice began to cry and tremble afresh.
“Hey! try to kill ye, did she? I’m glad o’ that—right glad o’t; ’twill rid us o’ trouble, ma’am. But la! think o’ that! And did she actually raise her hand to you!”
“Oh yes, Mrs. Tarnley—frightful. I’m saved by a miracle—I don’t know how—the mercy of God only.” ”

“ And all this time she was looking through the kitchen-window, with dismal eyes, from her clumsy oak chair by the fire, with her feet on the fender, and her lean shanks as close to the bars as was safe, shaking her head from time to time as she looked out on the black outlines of the trees which stood high and gloomy above the wall at the other side, against the liquid moonlit sky. ”

“ The period when women “come out” and see the world, and men in the old-fashioned phrase “sow their wild oats”—that glorious summer-time of self-love, sin, and folly—that bleak and bitter winter of the soul, through which the mercy of God alone preserves for us alive the dormant germs of good, was past for him, without killing, as it sometimes does, all the tenderness and truth of the nursery. ”

“ Well, ma’am, at the funeral, as I’ve heard say, the young lord that liked her well, if she’d a had him—and liked her still in spite of all—gave Sir Harry a lick or two wi’ the rough side o’ his tongue, and a duel came out o’ them words more than a year afterwards, and Harry Boots was killed, and he’s buried away down at Wyvern.”
“Well, see there! Ain’t it a wonder how gentlemen that has all this world can give, will throw away their lives at a word, like that,” moralized Dulcibella Crane—“and not knowing what’s to become o’ them, when they’ve lost all here—all in the snap of a pistol. ”

“ The distant booming of the organ-pipes assured him that the light grey eye and sharp ear of the Sergeant were occupied still elsewhere.
Tom Orange was broaching a dreadful conspiracy.
It was no less than that the boy should meet him at the foot of the field where the two oziers grow, at eleven o’clock, on the night following, and run away with him, and see mammy again, and come to a nice place where he should be as happy as the day is long, and mammy live with him always, and Tom look in as often as his own more important business would permit. ”

“ It was in the midst of these secret misgivings that a new care and hope visited her—a trembling, delightful hope, that hovers between life and death—sometimes in sad and mortal fear—sometimes in delightful anticipation of a new and already beloved life, coming so helplessly into this great world—unknown, to be her little comrade, all dependent on that beautiful love with which her young heart was already overflowing. ”

“ I hope I may live to reward you,” said the lady, extending her hand vaguely towards the old servant.
“I’m true to them as gives me bread, and ever was, and that’s old Mildred Tarnley’s truth. If she eats their bread, she’ll maintain their right, and that’s only honest—that’s reason, ma’am.”
“I have no right to cry no; I cry excellent, good, good, very good, for as you are my husband’s servant, I have all the benefit of your admirable fidelity. Boo! I am so grateful, and one day or other, old girl, I’ll reward you—and very good tea, and every care of me. ”

“ Be she what she might, assassin—devil, he could not and would not permit her to lie in jail. Arrested in his own house, with many sufferings and one great wrong to upbraid him with—with rights, imaginary he insisted, but honestly believed in, perhaps, by her—with other rights, which his tortured heart could not deny, the melancholy rights which are founded on outlawry and disgrace, eleemosynary, but quite irresistible when pleaded with natures not lost to all good, and which proclaim the dreadful equity—that vice has its duties no less than virtue. ”

“ A twittering of small birds fills the air, and the solemn cawing comes mellowed on the ear from the dark rookery at the other side of the ravine, that, crossing at the side of the Grange, debouches on the wider and deeper glen that is known as the Vale of Carwell.
Youth enjoys a change of abode, and with the instinct of change and adventure proper to its energies, delights in a new scene. ”